Tag Archives: Users

What Software Version Do You Launch First? Three Suggestions

Situation: The CEO of an early-stage software company has two versions of its software that they could launch. It has an alpha site set up and is configured to serve up to 10K simultaneous users. There are two beta versions that they could launch next. What software version do you launch first?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Use the more basic version for the Beta launch.
    • Restrict the Alpha to individuals within the company until the major bugs are resolved. Once this is ready, proceed to Beta launch.
    • The right target users will be both early adopters who are effective sneezers.
    • Select a segment of the market that is the home of both enthusiasts and sneezers – for example, if it were the music market target dance music – a crowd that is easy to attract.
    • Target a service that many in the game and related early adopter worlds like. At the right time they will sneeze frequently to their friends and contacts.
    • Let the creative audience know that the Beta version is an artist-centric site, but that it will be followed soon by a consumer link that they can tell their fans about.
  • Assemble a knowledge bank of experts to guide the company as it progresses through Beta. These experts can and to help the company prep as fully as possible prior to launch.
  • Crossing the Chasm – when the company is ready for this.
    • Find an appropriate venue that attracts target users. Again, as an example, in the music world this could be American Idol. Through American Idol, the play would be to allow fans to access and download the songs that their favorite contestants sang this week, plus other songs from their favorites.
    • An approach like this quickly opens a large market for a new app.

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How Do You Best Test a New App Online? Five Perspectives

Situation: A CEO has a new app that her company wants to test online. The principal challenge is avoiding a “catastrophic success” – success that ramps so quickly that the company is unable to deliver the quality or responsiveness expected by users. How do you best test a new app online?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The challenge is similar to that faced in the massively multiplayer game space.
    • Creators target a small number of known enthusiasts (sneezers) with the message that they are special. The creators ask them to preview a new game and provide feedback that will help the creators produce the best game possible.
    • Never apologize for an Alpha or Beta test. Let enthusiasts know that they are getting the first peek at what will be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Enthusiasts will tolerate Alpha conditions – as long as the company responds quickly to their suggestions for service or performance improvement.
  • For initial live tests hype the coolness and uniqueness of early availability and adoption.
    • Don’t lower expectations – manage them by responding very rapidly and fixing any glitches. This is why Web companies are 24-hour, eat and sleep in the office affairs during launch and for as long post-launch as needed to assure success.
    • Continually hype the coolness of being involved early.
    • Use the current version as the early test. When the company is ready to spread beyond the very first users, reward them for sneezing the app to other users.
      • For example, as a Beta Testers, users get 10 free 1-year plug-ins to give to their friends. For each additional user that they bring on-board, they get an additional 10 free 1-year plug-ins.
      • This technique supports the coolness of having been a Test participant because it makes the participants cooler with their close circle of contacts. The really smart ones will give free plug-ins to other sneezers and influencers. Reward this latter group for bringing on additional users.
  • Using lessons from the gaming market:
    • Shake out all issues pre-Alpha Test.
    • Conduct automated testing of the software via server farms that are set up for this.
    • Be prepared for upgrades – both in the software and in the server farms. Typically upgrades are conducted while the software and systems are live.
    • Create test localities to pre-test any upgrades to assess the impact on performance and service prior to deployment. This minimizes disruption to the broader audience.
    • Recruit, alert, and reward those who assist with these tests.
  • It is possible to conduct an unsophisticated Alpha Test, but this can’t be risked in Beta Tests.
    • Alpha testing is usually conducted as an internal exercise and lasts until all of the bugs have been identified and worked out.
    • The Beta test is then planned, with a known number of sites or users.
  • Concerning IP Protection:
    • Threats will come from two sources:
      • The iTunes types who may perceive the new offering as a threat to their markets – ones with deep pockets to keep the company busy defending its legal position.
      • International teams who rapidly clone any new technology that they find for a variety of motives. These groups tend to work from locales where IP protection is difficult to impossible.
    • IP is not secure until tested in courts. Often this involves the most innocuous aspects of the IP or software offering. In addition, big players may seek injunctions to halt service until courts resolve claimed IP conflicts.

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How Do You Establish the Company’s Brand? Four Approaches

Situation: A company has developed a leading local position in an important new technology. The CEO is concerned that the company’s suppliers may try to move into their market and replace them. What’s the best strategy to counter this threat? How do you establish the company’s brand?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Exhibiting high growth is the company’s best shot – whether to preserve exclusivity in the company’s geographic area or to build the company’s brand. Aggressively build the company’s service presence to build a sustainable advantage.
  • The primary question is – What is the objective? The objective is to build the company’s own presence and brand.
    • What would happen if another, better technology was launched? Wouldn’t the company want to offer this?
    • Think Web 2.0+. Build the company’s website as the place to go to discuss the technology, share thoughts, designs and software, and easily source prototypes – provided by the company. Let users define the site and the market for the company.
    • The bottom line: exclusivity may not be in the company’s best interest if it inhibits access to the best technology. Strive to build the company’s brand instead and be opportunistic on the exclusivity issue.
  • What markets have gone through similar development? What can you learn from them?
    • Document other rapidly changing markets. Hire a current undergraduate or MBA student to research how these markets have developed.
    • Select a target vendor with multiple locations and do a deal with them to locate your technology and service in their locations.
    • Look at a franchise for which the company’s technology is a compliment and see whether franchise owners are open to adding the company’s technology in their locations.
  • Does the company have a partnership strategy? How can they accelerate strategic development?
    • Where is the place to focus?
    • Who is the perfect partner for this focus?
    • Identify the most promising markets and use partnerships to accelerate penetration of those markets. Write partnership agreements so that once an area is developed the company has the option to take it over. This is a classic market development strategy.
    • Give away some of the company’s margin to partners in lieu of salaries or commissions to support market development.
    • Look for partners in key locations in the company’s territory. Do a demo at a Starbucks where engineers like to hang out.
    • Hire a sales or business development person to work on partnership development.

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How Do You Maintain Momentum as You Grow? Seven Factors

Interview with Ishveen Anand, CEO, OpenSponsorship.com

Situation: Emerging stage companies that get early traction must maintain momentum and strong growth. This is particularly true if the company is competing in an established industry where innovative and new solutions are not the norm. Early adopters fall back into old, comfortable habits. Filling the pipeline with new prospects takes a lot of energy. How do you maintain momentum as you grow?

Advice:

  • Find a familiar, respected example of an existing service that is similar to yours. Match.com is widely recognized. We use Match.com to describe how we connect athletes with potential sponsors. Our service is free in the early stages and focuses on introductions. It costs nothing unless the parties decide on a deal. It’s up to the parties to decide whether to go out, form a relationship, and later end up together.
  • Map the stages of a sale for your offering, and select progressive KPIs that represent these stages. For example, early on it may be users. Later it becomes messages between users. A sale is closed when messages produce deals. Once you have progressive KPIs you can focus on tipping points between the stages and facilitating movement from user to message to deal. Set metrics and timeline objectives at each stage of the transaction.
  • Closely monitor conversation rates between users, messages and deals. Watch the momentum of conversion between the stages and test interventions that positively impact this momentum.
  • Match social media channels to the personalities of each of your stages. Twitter is a great metric of sales success and LinkedIn helps us to understand the reach of OpenSponsorship. Instagram is a great tool for those selling products, so slightly less relevant to us, but still necessary. Use the appropriate channel that will best bring potential users into your sales stream. An advantage of social media channels is that these provide additional insight into your transaction stream and what users are saying about you.
  • Understand what’s right for your users. Early on you look for elements that will create buzz and feed viral growth. Target special events and opportunities which offer high visibility. For us, a big event will be the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. For another company it may be a large convention like CES or SxSW. Plan in advance and make the most of these opportunities.
  • Know your users’ seasonality. What are their peak purchase seasons? Do they have special seasons? What are their off-seasons? How can you take advantage of this knowledge to offer them new opportunities? Populate your web site with the right pages and social media marketing efforts linking to these pages to drive usage and business year-round.
  • Important pieces of momentum are staffing and investment. Early on, these seem almost like distractions to a CEO. The CEO is more engaged in the product or service being provided. However, personnel and fundraising decisions critically impact the future of the venture and must be taken seriously. Success will depend upon the CEO’s being able to move seamlessly between conversations about product and service, staffing and fundraising.

You can contact Ms. Anand at [email protected]

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How Do You Reach High-end Users? Three Thoughts

Situation: A company has developed a disrupting technology that will allow OEMs to produce high-end circuits at a fraction of their current cost. A non-exclusive OEM partner is using this technology but doesn’t have a channel to high-end users, and the company is too small to reach these customers themselves.  How do you reach high-end users?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Your dilemma is having a disrupting technology in a market with a strong division between OEMs servicing the low/medium-end market and those servicing the high-end market.
    • Your technology collapses the division between the low/medium and the high-end markets and OEMs and proposes a full-scale technical shift.
    • This shift disrupts the current business models of either group of OEMs, as well as their technology development plans. This is why you are finding resistance.
  • Therefore, you need a channel partner that is either:
    • A low/medium-end OEM who is just as much a disrupter as you are – highly promising but not yet well-established – and who is capability of developing a high-end sales and marketing effort; or
    • A high-end OEM that knows the market but is collapsing under their current strategy and needs an entirely different solution to revive their prospects.
  • Your near-term task is to simply gain market capability – both manufacturing and marketing/sales – and to use this capability to gain early market acceptance.
    • Your investors want to see early “Blue Chip” partners, but given market realities, this may not be the wisest strategy.
    • If, over the next 12 months, you can begin to impact the market shares of the high-end OEMs, this is the surest way to gain their attention. Once you start to gain share, a likely outcome is that one of the high-end OEMs will buy you to lock up your IP.
    • Another company recently used a similar strategy entering a new market by collaborating with a high-visibility partner.
      • In one year, they took 30% market share from the market leader.
      • The next year the market leader bought them because “it was less expensive to buy you than to spend the marketing dollars that we would have had to spend to compete against you.”

 

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